Data used in Morphological and anatomical variability of stems of an industrial hemp collection and properties of its fibers

This dataset is used to generate results for the research article, The morphological and anatomical variability of the stems of an industrial hemp collection and the properties of its fibres in the journal Heliyon. Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is a leading fibre crop and it has a new range of industrial applications. However, the complexity of hemp germplasm resulted in insufficient information on the effect of genotypes on fibre quality and quantity. In this study, 16 fibre and non-fibre type hemp genotypes were evaluated to compare the morpho-anatomical differences of stems and physico-mechanical fibre properties under three retting methods. Hemp genotypes showed morphological variations that affect fibre processing and a unique pattern of fibre wedges in cross-sections of the basal internode. Fibre yield, tensile strength, colour, and moisture retention significantly varied among the genotypes. The hemp collection used in this study formed three clusters in principal component analysis and traits such as internodal length, node number, hurd yield, and tensile strength highly contributed to the total variability. Additionally, non-fibre type hemp genotypes that showed important fibre properties were identified. The dataset used to generate these results, images of cross-sections of hemp stems from 16 genotypes, and an image of rotten Abelmoschus which was used to obtain lesions for microbial retting of hemp stems are reposited here.